No way to treat our vets

Our opinion: How can a nation expect people to serve if it treats its veterans shabbily?

Close to 48,000 Americans have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The good news is that better body armor and advances in medicine helped save many men and women who might otherwise have died.

The bad new is that they are coming home with injuries that in another era would have been fatal, leaving many of them with what will likely be lifelong medical needs. Yet for all the high rhetoric of politicians about how indebted America is to those who serve, these wounded warriors are going months — even more than a year in some parts of New York — fighting just to be approved for the care they earned.

What’s more, they may well find themselves being nickeled and dimed by the very system that’s supposed to help them, if the treatment of Vahan Zarifian by the Veterans Administration in Albany is any example.

Mr. Zarifian isn’t one of those new vets; he’s a 93-year-old survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. As the Times Union’s Chris Churchill has explained twice in his Advocate column, Mr. Zarifian moved to Albany from New Jersey to be closer to family, only to be told by the VA here that the three home visits by a nurse that he got a week in New Jersey were being cut to two. And when he arranged to have Catholic Charities pay for a visit, the VA cut him back to one.

The former Army medic, who has heart and breathing problems, needed the visits to help him shower and shave, among other personal services. The VA insists it hasn’t deprived him of anything — the largely wheelchair-bound nonagenarian is free to make the four-mile trip to the VA Hospital, it says. That’s right, four miles, for a shower and shave.

A system that seems to have a problem taking care of its old veterans now appears to be overwhelmed with new ones. As the Center for Investigative Reporting found, veterans who file a disability claim with the VA office in lower Manhattan wait an average of a year and 14 days just for decision. That’s the second-longest wait in the country after Waco, Texas. But the national average isn’t anything to boast about — veterans typically wait about eight months. As of July 30, the line was 15,000 people long.

The old cliche could not be more appropriate here: Talk is cheap. Enough, senators and representatives, with the words of thanks, gratitude, and honors. Platitudes are worthless to the thousands of veterans who are waiting for their government to make good on the promise to care for them if they were hurt serving their country. This is one war debt that needs to be paid, now.

8 Responses

Politicians love to praise our armed services men and women, but when it comes to actually caring for them after they’ve served, they turn their backs on funding. If you send them to war, you better send the cash to care for them. Waging two unfunded wars wasn’t the best idea; wars demand sacrifice by all–the entire country. Or don’t go to war. Duh.

The VA works really hard – been going there for care for a long time now and the place has improved a lot in the past few years. I see Veterans in that adult day health program – they have a lot of social activities and interaction, can get any medical care issues taken care of and also personal services. Transportation to it is free! Better than this guy being forced to sit at home all day, every day.

The VA hospital here in Albany probably does a reasonable job, by and large, but it needs to accomodate the desires of individual veterans if at all possible – and that may mean looking the other way in certain instances over certain things for certain individuals – sometimes you just gotta’ push the rules aside a little bit…

On the other hand, the Albany VA hospital has had its share of “issues” over the years – however, individual care needs to not be one of those issues.

If you think currently returning vets are being treated badly, just try to secure a legally owing VA pension for an elderly vet or his/her surviving spouse. My 92 year old mother,the widow of a WWII vet, has been in a nursing home since 2006. I have her POA, and applied for a VA Aid and Attendance pension for her last May – for which she was absolutely qualified. Review of these applications is supposed to be expedited for people over 70. No such luck. Be prepared to be on hold at least two hours, or more frequently,just cut off, if you try to get information. The VA just waits for the vet or survivor to die. But we needed those funds to help pay the nursing home, which doesn’t accept Medicaid – my mom loves it there and I don’t want to move her, so I started raiding my retirement savings. A year after the application was filed, with no news from the VA, I gave up and wrote my Congressman, and the pension was granted. But the VA STILL hasn’t paid the retroactive money owing – that is, from the date of application to the date she was granted the pension. Next week ‘ll get my Congressman after them again.

My dad was a decorated anti-tank gunner in the Ardennes. And he certainly didn’t expect his widow to get such shabby treatment from the country he fought for.

This story annoys me to no end. The US should be taking care of the health needs of our vets. No funds? cut back on welfare payments.
NY, the state that nichol and dimes you. Cuts back deserved benefit for someone who risked his life but doles out benefits to people who sit home, pop out babies every year and contribute nothing to society. Whats wrong with this picture. Am I missing something?

Hmmm… Your guys are in charge, the democrats, both in New York and Nationally, but not a peep about poor leadership from the top. President Obama is YOUR guy. If an editorial like this was written during a republican administration, you would most certainly have included a stinging criticism of the President for not leading on this issue, which is a REAL issue. Your silence on this speaks volumes.